


first, last, and always

by megster



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America: The First Avenger - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), captain america: the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: (nothing is explicit and if you think i should add a tag please let me know), warnings for canon-level violence and torture; canon-compliant child abuse (neglect); canon deaths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-19 13:33:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1471657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megster/pseuds/megster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy, F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, and Steve thinks it could easily go the other way. (Write me a tragedy, and I'll show you a hero.)</p><p>This is a story of two boys from Brooklyn, one war, three falls (from a train, in a plane, from a helicarrier), and something that tastes like redemption but could just be love. </p><p>(It's a love story and a war story, and maybe those are the same thing, but first and foremost it is a tragedy with a chance of a happy ending.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part i (1927-1945)

**Author's Note:**

> part i deals with events before and during captain america: the first avenger.
> 
> part ii deals with the seventy years between steve going down and getting found.
> 
> part iii will deal with events of the avengers and captain america: the winter soldier.

It is 1927, and Steve’s eyes are bright with fever. Bucky has been told several times to stay away, the last time by Steve’s mother, her kind face taut with worry.

And Bucky, well, he has never been terribly good with following orders (to his parents’ chagrin), and every day for two weeks, he stands at the Rogers’ door until Mrs. Rogers lets him in.

It gets to be a sort of routine, a script that they both follow.

“James,” she always says. “Go home, you’ll get sick.”

“I don’t care,” he always tells her, and he means it every time.

And she’ll just shake her head and let him in, and Bucky will dart to Steve’s room.

Steve can never help the smile that breaks over his face when he sees Bucky, even as he warns Bucky to stay back. “I’ll get you sick,” he says, and coughs.

Bucky grins at him. “Then I’ll get to stay home and miss school like you.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but doesn’t say anything as Bucky turns on the radio to look for the ballgame.

The next week, Bucky does get sick, and then he really does stay away because he refuses to be the reason Steve has to spend whole days in bed as coughs wrack his body.

*

It is 1930, and Steve glares at Bucky. “Buck,” he says, “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”

Bucky is still trembling with anger and adrenaline. “It was three against one, I was evening the odds.”

“You don’t have to protect me,” Steve says quietly.

Bucky wants to say, _Then stop getting into fights. Stop pissing off guys that are three times your weight. Stop getting hurt. Please, stop getting hurt, because one day I will kill someone for it_.

He doesn’t.

“I was bored, kid,” Bucky says. “You had ‘em on the ropes.”

Steve smiles, and there is blood running down his face and a bruise blossoming on his cheek, and he says, “My mom is going to kill us.”

“Us nothing,” Bucky says as he slings an arm around Steve’s shoulders, relieved at the lighthearted tone. “She’s gonna kill _you_. I’ll make sure to write a real good speech for your funeral.”

“Gee, thanks, Buck,” Steve says, eyes glinting. “I’ll make sure I leave you everything in my will.”

*

It is 1935, and Bucky has a different girl on his arm every time Steve sees him, and sometimes one girl on each. (“Let’s go to the movies,” he’d say, and Steve would go, and feel the disappointment radiating from whichever unlucky girl stuck with him.)

If Steve misses the days when it was just him and Bucky, well. You can’t go back to the past; you just have to keep moving forward.

If Bucky goes through one girl after another, and finds ones he likes well enough but never any he likes more than Steve, well. Girls will come and go (mostly go), but he’ll always have Steve.

*

It is 1937, and Bucky fractures a rib and sustains a concussion when he diverts attention from Steve to himself during a drunken street brawl. To be fair, _they’re_ not the drunk ones, and Steve just couldn’t stop himself from antagonizing one particularly drunk brute twice his size, and Bucky has never been one to stay away from a fight, especially when Steve is in the thick of it.

When they’re finally away, Bucky collapses against a wall, trying to focus on Steve’s face.

“Bucky!” Steve says, concern threading through his tone, although it could also have been pain. He had taken just as many blows as Bucky.

“M’fine,” Bucky says, fighting back a dizzy spell.

“Sit,” Steve says, and Bucky does, before he falls over. “I think you’re concussed.”

“You think?” Bucky says, a bit snappily. He’s sorry when he sees Steve flinch a little, though, and says so.

“Buck,” Steve says, in a low voice. He’s sitting too, now. “You’ve _got_ to stop fighting my battles. I’m serious.”

Bucky looks Steve dead in the eyes. “Your battles are my battles,” he says.

(Later, when memories come trickling back, he’ll think that this was the first time he said _I love you_ to Steve.)

*

It is 1939, and Bucky finds himself pleading with Steve to stay with him after Sarah dies.

“Thank you, Buck,” Steve says, “But I can get by on my own.” There’s something like pride, mingled with gratitude, in the set of his shoulders.

“The thing is,” Bucky says, and he wants to take Steve by the shoulders and shake him until he understands. “You don’t _have_ to. I’m with you to the end of the line, pal.”

(It’s the second time he can remember saying _I love you_ in no uncertain terms, and more than seven decades later, when Steve repeats it back to him as they fall from the sky, it jars something in his ravaged memory, and when Steve goes plummeting amidst the debris from the crashing helicarrier, he dives after him without thinking.)

*

It is 1941 and they are sitting in Bucky’s room and Steve says, “I think America is going to join the war.”

Bucky runs a hand through his hair. “Don’t say that.”

“If we do,” Steve says, “I’m going to enlist.”

“War changes things,” Bucky says. He doesn’t say that the army would never take Steve, with his small frame and his asthma and his penchant for catching every bug that sweeps through the population.

Steve doesn’t say anything, not for a long while.

Bucky has almost forgotten the conversation when Steve says, “Not us.”

“What?” He looks up at Steve, who hasn’t looked up from his sketchbook.

“Not us,” Steve repeats. “It won’t change us. I might change, and you might change, but it won’t change us.”

(When he remembers this conversation, he can’t help thinking that this was the first time Steve said _I love you_ to him, and he laughs until tears leak from his eyes at the irony of it all.)

*

It is 1942, and Steve stares up at the sky. It’s a stifling summer night, they’re on a hill in Central Park, and the moon is a deep red.

“It’s called a blood moon,” Steve says conversationally. He had insisted that they stay out to see it, and of course Bucky had acquiesced.

Bucky is sprawled lazily across the grass, and Steve is sitting with his sketchbook in his lap.

“Whose blood?” Bucky asks, half-jokingly. He picks at the grass idly.

“Everyone’s,” Steve says, and Bucky half sits up, propping himself on his elbows.

“Not ours,” Bucky says firmly. America is at war, and so is the rest of the world, but they are not. They are not.

“Yet,” Steve says, and Bucky’s lips are thin on his face, pressed together in anger.

“Not ours,” Bucky repeats, and he doesn’t understand why Steve is bent on spilling his own blood for his country; it’s not like he has much to waste. (No, that’s a lie. He knows why; he knows Steve through and through and he knows Steve feels like he owes it to his country, he knows Steve wants to contribute, he knows Steve wants to do the right thing.)

Conversation stops, but when the moon regains its silver glow and they finally get up to leave, Steve rips a page out of his sketchbook and wordlessly hands it to Bucky.

Bucky finds himself looking at his own face.

“I thought you were here to draw the moon,” he says, stupidly. He thinks maybe he’s blushing, but at least it’s too dark for Steve to see.

“I got distracted,” Steve says. There’s something that might be heat in his voice, and Bucky looks at him.

“Steve,” he says, and there’s nothing like seduction in his tone; seduction is for an endless string of girls that are too good for him and meaningless nights spent in rooms other than his own and casual flings that last a week at most. Steve is none of those, although he _is_ certainly too good for Bucky.

Steve just smiles at him before saying, “Let’s get home. It’s late.”

*

It is 1943, and the sun is beginning to set over the city and Bucky stares blankly at the draft notice in his hand, and it feels like the world is ending.

Steve has tried to enlist three times already, and been turned away each time.

Bucky hasn’t tried once, because there is no reason for the army not to take him, and he has never left Steve behind before, and isn’t going to start now.

And now he’s going to have to, he has no choice in it, and _god_.

What a stupid, stupid time to realize he is in love.

*

It is 1943, and Steve has been turned away from the recruitment office for the fourth time, and Bucky tries to keep his voice steady as he tells Steve that he enlisted. (He cannot tell Steve that the army wants him, he who has never once expressed the slightest interest in serving, while continuing to reject Steve at every turn.) He thinks that Steve will hear the lie in his words, catch a hitch in the sentence.

Steve doesn’t. His face goes blank for a brief moment, and then a smile comes, brimming with sincerity as his smiles always do. “That’s my Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky nearly shivers under the phrase. He is Steve’s, through and through, and he is in love, and he is going to war.

“I’ll kill lots of Nazis just for you,” Bucky says, and smiles. He wonders if Steve can see how brittle it is. “Now come on, we’re going out tonight. Just you and me.”

They drink, and even Steve has a little more than he probably should, and if Bucky was in full control of his mental facilities, he’d realize that Steve is more upset than he had originally let on.

Actually, he’s completely soused, and he still knows that Steve is upset.

“Steve,” he says, and he’s proud that he didn’t slur at all. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave you.” It’s an _I love you_ , and he hopes Steve hears it.

“I’ll find a way to join you,” Steve promises, and Bucky’s damned if that isn’t an _I love you too_.

*

It is 1943 and the night before he leaves, he and Steve go out with two girls.

He returns by himself, early—he liked the girls plenty, but when Steve had drifted away he had lost interest in dancing. He had been hoping that Steve would already be back at the apartment, but no luck.

He means to stay awake until Steve gets back, but exhaustion wins out, and he wakes up the next morning to an empty room and two pieces of paper tacked to his door.

The first is a note, in Steve’s neat and compact hand: _Bucky, I’m sorry, but last night was hard enough, and it isn’t a goodbye, not really. Stay safe out there, and don’t do anything too stupid while you’re gone. –Steve_

The second piece of paper is a sketch of the two of them, with Bucky’s arm casually slung around Steve’s, as they were wont to do. There’s something scribbled on the back, and Bucky smiles as he reads it. _Buck, I felt pretty stupid drawing myself, but I had to give you something to remember me by, didn’t I?_

There’s the _I love you_ he was looking for, and he folds both pieces of paper and slides them into his bag.

“I love you too, kid,” he says out loud, as he closes the door behind him.

(Later, when he thinks he is dying, he wants to kick himself for not finding and kissing Steve once before leaving. What was there to lose?)

*

It is 1943 and Steve does not know his own body anymore. Not that his old one was terribly good, as far as bodies went. This new one is much better, but it is disconcerting.

It is also disconcerting that he has been gifted with incredible speed, reflexes, strength, recovery time—and yet, he is nothing but a walking, talking propaganda tool.

He should be fighting, he should be on the frontlines, he should be _helping_.

(He should be with Bucky.)

*

It is 1943 and Bucky can’t breathe. He is going to die here, like a lab rat, and God, he should have kissed Steve. Should have told him “I love you,” should have done it when he had the chance.

Now he is going to die and Steve will never know for sure, and after a few days there is nothing but his name and rank and serial number and Steve, Steve with his clever hands and easy smile and clear blue eyes like the sky in late spring. Steve, who is the best person he knows, the best person he has ever known. Steve, with his heart of a lion and a spine of steel and his moral compass pointing true north and his unshakeable faith in good prevailing over evil.

“Sergeant James Barnes, 32557046,” he says hoarsely, with an unbearably bright light shining into his eyes and something, god, _something_ being injected into his arm, and pain wracks his body and death would be kinder than this, to be nothing but a test subject for a crazy Nazi scientist, providing unwilling aid in research.

“Sergeant James Barnes, 32557046,” he says out loud. _I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t want to go, I would never have left you, I would have let them arrest me for ignoring my conscription, I love you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_.

*

It is 1943 and Steve’s heart is in his throat and he has never, _never_ been so scared, because Bucky is strapped down and his eyes are horribly blank, _Bucky_ , whose eyes are the most expressive part of a wonderfully expressive face, and he’s muttering his name and his serial number in an unsteady voice, and God forgive him, Steve has never wanted to hurt anyone in his life until now. Now, given the chance, he would tear the people who did this to Bucky into pieces.

When he undoes the straps, he’s relieved to see Bucky focus on him. “I thought you were dead,” he says, light tone at odds with the tension in his entire body.

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky quips, and something eases in Steve.

(It tightens again when Bucky refuses to leave without him, refuses to _get out_ like he should, and if it had been just him he might not have had the courage to jump the chasm, but because Bucky is waiting on the other side and because his new body hasn’t failed him yet, he jumps, and makes it, and lives. And isn’t it just like Bucky to be saving him without even knowing it?)

*

It is 1943, and Bucky is a fool, and he would follow Steven Rogers through the depths of hell. Enemy territory is nothing.

*

It is 1944, and Bucky is finally, _finally_ getting used to the super soldier thing.

He still watches Steve’s back, partly out of habit and partly because his primary role in the Commandos is to be a sniper, a damn good one, and part of that job description is to keep Steve safe.

He sees that the world, or at least the Allies’ side of the world, is in love with Captain America, and bitterly thinks that he was first to love Steve Rogers, the man behind the shield, as it were.

And he thinks Steve Rogers will fall in love with Peggy Carter, thinks Steve is half in love with her already, and God, it stings. But she’s smart and beautiful and has a fighting spirit to match Steve’s own, and she likes him, maybe even loves him, and she’s so much better for Steve than he could ever be.

And he wants to hate her, he does, but he can’t. Can’t do that to Steve, and anyway, she’s got a sense of humor that aligns closely with his own, and when Steve tells him to ask her about the day in training camp that she punched some asshole named Hodge, Bucky does and finds that he wants to be her friend.

Of course, Agent Carter is as sharp as anyone he’s ever met, and one day he’s sitting at the bar when she slides onto the stool beside him. “Sergeant Barnes,” she says.

“Call me Bucky,” he says, and means it.

“Bucky, then,” she says, lips curving into a smile. She _is_ beautiful. “Call me Peggy.”

He finds it in himself to smile back. He likes her, even if he doesn’t want to, and he’s never been one for lying to himself. “What can I do for you, Peggy?”

She looks him dead in the eyes, and seeing her steady gaze, he’s surer than ever that Steve deserves nothing less than her. “I wanted to thank you for keeping Steve safe, and for being his friend.”

Bucky thinks that she couldn’t have twisted the dagger harder if she tried. “It’s my job, ma’am,” he says.

“No,” Peggy says. “I’m serious. There aren’t very many people who know Steve, really know him, and you’re the one who knows him best, and you mean so much to him.”

“You do too,” Bucky says, wondering if his voice betrays his emotions.

“Bucky,” she says, somewhat admonishingly, “I’m not here to ask your permission to date your Captain. He can decide that for himself.”

Bucky finds himself laughing, however bitterly, at her candor.   _I’m in love with him too_ , he wants to say. _I’ve been in love with him for years_. “If you’re waiting for him to ask you on a date, you’ll be waiting a while. I’ll put in a good word for you,” is what he actually says, and winks. It’s what he ought to do, and Peggy is maybe the only person in the world that’s good enough for his best friend, and what does it matter that his heart is constricting?

“I don’t need that that, either,” Peggy says. “Steve was just an excuse to properly meet you. I hear you’re a good shot. I bet I’m better.” There is a twinkle in her eye.

Bucky accepts the challenge and follows her to the shooting range.

He wins, just _barely_ , when Peggy misses a bullseye by an inch to the left. She laughs when he whoops victoriously, and sticks her hand out to shake. “I’ll get you next time,” she says.

(She does win the next time.)

*

It is 1944, and he is falling, falling, falling, with Steve’s frantic, desperate yell echoing in his ears.

The day had started so well, with Steve’s cheeks flushed in the crisp mountain air, his eyes particularly blue against the sky, his hair shining golden under the rays of the sun. Beautiful, and Bucky had drank in the sight of him.

“Buck, stop looking at me like that,” he had said, but his lip had been twitching. “I think you’re supposed to be packing up the radio equipment.”

“I got distracted,” Bucky had said, deliberately, and had enjoyed watching the flash of recognition cross Steve’s eyes, had enjoyed the brilliant smile that flickered across Steve’s face.

And now he’s falling and it’s funny, people say that your life flashes before your eyes when you’re falling to your death, but all he can see is Steve.

Then again, maybe people were right.

He falls, and he hopes that Steve is alive and fighting. He hopes that Steve will not mourn for too long, and he hopes that Steve marries Peggy and has the family he deserves, and he hopes that Steve knows that he dies gladly for him.

He hopes Steve knows he loves him, has always loved him, will always love him.

*

It is 1944 and it’s ironic that Steve has never wanted to drink away his troubles until today, when he no longer can.

He gives it a good try, though.

None of the Commandos had been able to meet his eyes when they returned to base, one man short. Or maybe he hadn’t been able to meet theirs. God knows he hadn’t been able to meet Peggy’s, for fear of—what? Sorrow? Sympathy? No matter. He couldn’t face anyone, just then. Or now, come to think of it.

He drinks, and he drinks, and _nothing happens_. He can still picture Bucky clear as day. Bucky, with eyes that sometimes spoke louder than his words, who was always in motion, whose smiles ranged from quick and sharp and bitter to slow and happy and loving. Bucky, with his sharp tongue and sharper mind, with the biting sarcasm that masked affection. Bucky, who had been the one constant in his life, who had been there through thick and thin. Bucky, who is first, last, and always in his mind.

This is what a broken heart feels like, he thinks.

Two years ago, Bucky had almost kissed him under a moon just come out of an eclipse; he’s sure of it.

This is what a broken heart feels like.

*

It is 1945, and Steve is cold in more ways than one.

He can’t even remember the last time he didn’t have Bucky, and he finds that he does not like it at all.

Peggy is a boon, and her matter-of-factness, her staunch belief that Bucky had made a choice willingly, would not have regretted anything, that helps more than he ever could have imagined. “Allow him the dignity of his choice,” she had said, and he is trying to, he _is_.

But sometimes he catches himself turning to say something to Bucky, catches himself thinking, _I’ve got to show Buck later_ , catches himself waiting to hear Bucky’s voice in his ear. And every time he remembers, it’s like watching Bucky fall all over again.

*

It is 1945 and Steve is in a plane with its nose pointed towards the ocean, and he is going to die.

He doesn’t have very many regrets.

If he really thinks about it, he only has two: missing out on Peggy, because God, Peggy with her perfect lips and piercing gaze and steady, steady hands. Peggy, who is brave and unyielding in her fight for _good_ , who takes no shit and certainly no prisoners, who might have let him forge a world by her side after the war.

And Bucky. Bucky who is first, last, and always, who has always been everything. Best friend, brother in arms, and maybe something more, if fate hadn’t had its way, and if he had just let Bucky kiss him under the soft light of a full moon just losing its red tinge.

Steve doesn’t know if he believes in a heaven, and he doesn’t even need there to be, all he needs is to be with Bucky, and he can’t stop thinking of a drunken night when he had vowed to Bucky that he’d find a way to join him, and now—.

Telling Peggy what he’s going to do is maybe the second worst thing he’s done, and he can’t bear that he’s the one causing the tears in her voice when she realizes what he’s going to do.

“I’m going to need a rain check on that dance,” Steve says into the radio, and his heart is cracking along the fault lines that are already there.

“All right,” she says, a little unsteadily. “A week next Saturday at The Stork Club.”

Oh, she is so brave and good, and he is leaving her behind.

“You’ve got it,” Steve says.

“Eight o’clock on the dot,” she says, strength returning to the timbre of her voice, and even now, even now she’s giving him exactly what he needs. “Don’t you dare be late, understood?”

“You know,” Steve says, and he draws from the strength she’s offering him, finding it in himself to banter with her one last time. “I still don’t know how to dance.”

“I’ll show you how,” Peggy says, and she’s crying now, in earnest, and Steve is sorry for the pain he’s causing. “Just be there.”

“We’ll have the band play something slow,” Steve says, and oh, the plane is plummeting, and he’s falling, falling, falling out of the cold blue sky, and God, he _does_ have one regret, and that’s that he never kissed either of the two people he loves. “I’d hate to step on your—“

*

It is 1945, and Bucky and Steve are lost to the world and frozen in time and the earth continues to turn without them.

(It is fitting, in a way, for James Buchanan Barnes and Steven Grant Rogers to share a fate, if not a resting place.)

 

 

 


	2. part ii (1945-2012)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Rogers sleeps for 70 years. Bucky Barnes does not.
> 
> Meanwhile, the world keeps turning and Peggy Carter forges her way forward into a new century.

It is 1945 and Peggy and Howard fight _hard_ against Operation Overcast. Peggy maintains that it is a breach of trust to the public; to take in scientists that willingly worked with people like Johann Schmidt.

“You will bring the enemy into the fold. You will compromise our ideals for negligible benefits,” she says to a nameless council, words clipped. “There is no advantage to be had, here.”

Howard is charming and furious by turns, mercurial as only a Stark can be. “We don’t need their minds when we have our own,” he tries, and when that fails he rages against the powers that be, citing the crimes against humanity some of these men have committed, citing morality and good, questioning fiercely whether anyone has considered the costs of disclosing their own top-secret projects to formerly hostile scientists.

In the end, even with Colonel Phillips’ support, Peggy and Howard _lose_. They are overruled, told that their personal loyalties are clouding their judgment, told to sit _down_ and take a figurative backseat.

Arnim Zola is one of the scientists recruited.

*

It is 1945 and the war is over and neither Steve Rogers’ nor Bucky Barnes’ bodies have been found despite Peggy and Howard’s best efforts.

*

It is 1946, and Peggy loses patience with the SSR after three months of paperwork and retrieves Zodiac on her own.

Howard hears, somehow. (He hears everything; Peggy swears he keeps cameras on her.)

The next day, he appoints her joint director of a new agency called SHIELD.

The name isn’t lost on her, and she walks out of the office, head held high.

*

It is 1946 and behind closed doors, Peggy and Howard both reluctantly come to the conclusion that Zola is better off under SHIELD supervision.

“Keep your friends close,” Howard says later that night, ebulliently, raising a glass.

Peggy knows it’s only a sham for the men surrounding them, that he has to be the charismatic Howard Stark they expect him to be, but she’ll play to his tune for tonight. “And your enemies closer,” she finishes for him, toasting him.

They lock gazes across the crowded bar, and Peggy catches the uncertainty in his eyes mirroring her own.

*

It is 1947, and he opens his eyes, and he does not know anything but there is pain and there is a light shining into his eyes and he is strapped to a table and something vaguely stirs in his mind; this is familiar and _wrong_ and there’s a sick feeling in his stomach and for some reason he can’t stop picturing blond hair and blue eyes and a gentle smile and _who is that man_?

And then there are cunning eyes behind round glasses leaning over him, and he lashes out, or tries to; this is wrong, this is very very wrong, he has to get away from this man _now_ , and then a needle is jabbed into his arm and he drifts away, fighting all the while.

The last thing he remembers is a summer night and a blood red moon and the blond haired man by his side.

(The next time he fully wakes up, he has a metal arm and a mission and a new name. And not much else.)

*

It is 1952, and a man who might be SSR grabs Howard Stark’s arm.

“Mr. Stark,” he says, and Howard looks at him impatiently; he has important _shit_ to do; he doesn’t have time to chat with a g-suit who looks like he hasn’t stepped out from behind a desk in years.

“Yes,” Howard says shortly.

“Mr. Stark,” the man says again, and Howard fights the urge to roll his eyes, because he knows what he’s going to hear; he knows that this is just another mouthpiece that’s going to try to tell him to stop searching, and that is the one thing he cannot do. Sure enough, the man goes on some rehearsed speech about wasted resources and keeping the end goal in mind and something about knowing priorities, and Howard tunes him out. His mind is has a hundred, thousand, million other places to be.

He realizes, probably a few seconds too late, that the man has stopped talking and is looking at him expectantly.

“No,” Howard says, and flashes a smile at him, the one Peggy calls his deflecting asshole smile. “I know my priorities, and I know this organization’s, and most of the time, those two overlap. This time, they don’t, but these expeditions are funded personally, and manned by _my_ employees. You have no say in this. I will not stop searching.”

(Twenty years later, Howard has a two year-old son with big, intelligent brown eyes, and he can’t see the child for the ghosts of his past. _Howard_ , Peggy pleads with him, _You need to stop. You need to let him go. Live your life. Look at your son._

Howard never does, and falls to the bottle more often than even their early days, and Peggy is angry with him _. Steve would never have wanted this_ , she tells him, and watches helplessly as Tony grows and shows signs of being even brighter than his exceptionally bright father, watches as Howard refuses to see him.

It is this, that in the end, Peggy cannot forgive Howard for.)

*

It is 1968, and a New York senator (a presidential candidate, a man with a winning smile) is struck down by three slugs (untraceable, Soviet-make). A family curse, people mutter. Just their luck.

(Bad luck, a curse, a ghost, a masked man. Call him what you will. Call him the Winter Soldier.)

*

It is 1973, and Peggy and Howard have their worst fight in _years_.

“You have a wife and a _son_ ,” she spits at him. “And all you have time for are your World Expos. Steve would be disappointed in you.”

“I’m building the future,” Howard snaps. “And I’m building it for my son.”

“ _You haven’t given him a second look in a year_ ,” Peggy says. “You are _lying_ , you are lying to me and you are lying to Maria and you are lying to _yourself_!”

“You’ve given up on Steve,” Howard says, and his voice is cold, so cold. “You’ve forgotten.”

“And you’ve forgotten that you have responsibilities other than to Steve! He would have _hated_ this,” she says, and she’s actually furious, and she slips in her control for a moment. “At least my children know I love them.”

And that was out of line, that was probably too far; her mother always said to never question the way another man raises his own children, but then again, her mother has always been a bit old-fashioned, and Peggy is decidedly _not_.

Howard’s eyes blaze, and she knows she’s hit a nerve.

“I love my son,” Howard says, all the fight suddenly gone from his stance.

“Then show it,” Peggy says, knowing that he won’t, knowing that Howard has _no_ idea what to do with a precocious three year old child that looks at his father and shies away.

*

It is 1975, and a boy with dark hair and eyes that are old for his almost-five years runs up to Peggy with a brilliant smile.

She bends down to give him a hug.

“Aunt Peggy,” he says. “Look at what I built!” And he shows her a circuit board, and Peggy can’t find her words for a second, because Tony is so, so clever; he’s four years old and he speaks in perfect sentences and he’s just built a circuit board and he watches everything around him carefully, and he can’t help but think that his father doesn’t care about him.

*

It is 1978, and Howard cannot bear how his only child looks at him with wariness, and he throws all of his energy into utilizing an alternative energy source, throws himself even more into developing something he calls an arc reactor, and finally, _finally_ makes a breakthrough.

(It’s the way of things, Peggy will think years later, that Howard never could save Tony in life, but does twice in death.)

*

It is 1982, and Peggy hears whispers about a man with a metal arm. She has heard them for years, but for the first time, she thinks that this might be important.

She calls Howard and asks him what he knows.

“Honestly, Peggy,” he says, “I haven’t looked into reports. You think it’s important?”

“Yes,” she says. “I’m sure of it.”

“Okay,” Howard says. “You dig on your end, and I’ll dig on mine.”

She thanks him and hangs up, unable to shake her unease, but feeling better that both she and Howard will now be looking.

*

It is 1985, and Peggy comes face to face with the man people call the Winter Soldier.

Oh, I am _dead_ , she thinks, as she sees the metal arm in her peripheral vision, as she goes for her gun, fast but not nearly fast enough.

He’s wearing a mask and all she can see is his eyes, and there’s _something_ about them but she can’t place it.

He raises his rifle to his shoulder in an easy motion, and now, _that_ is far too familiar, and Peggy knows why it’s familiar, but that _doesn’t make any sense_.

“I hear you’re a good shot,” Peggy says, keeping her voice light.

The man falters.

“I bet I’m better,” she says, and whips out her pistol.

Later at SHIELD, they’ll ask how she got away without a scratch, when the Winter Soldier never fails, _never_ misses a hit.

“Everybody has off days,” is all Peggy says, but her mind is in overdrive, thinking of the way the Winter Soldier had stopped coming after her, thinking of how she should have emptied her gun into his head when she had the chance, of how she had instead hit his metal arm before sprinting to her car. How, judging from everything they know about the Winter Soldier, he should have followed her and completed the kill.

How he didn’t.

*

It is 1985, and he returns to base and his head is pounding and he’s failed in his objective for the very first time and his arm isn’t functioning correctly because there are four bullets in it (but none in his flesh) and _he knows that woman_.

“Mission report,” one of his handlers says.

“The woman,” he says desperately. “Who is she?”

“Mission report,” his handler says again, voice hardening.

But he can’t stop thinking about that woman, her crisp accent, her steady hands on her pistol.

“Mission report,” his handler repeats, and his voice takes on a dangerous edge.

Something clicks in his mind, and he _remembers_ , he remembers her, Peggy Carter, whose smile was so sharp it could cut diamonds, who could outshoot him, who got this _look_ in her eyes when she saw Steve—

 _Steve_.

Bucky surges out of the chair he’s sitting in and grabs his handler by the throat, but the man gestures with one hand and suddenly there’s a burst of pain, and he’s forgotten about the wires attached to his arm, and the electricity courses through him.

The last thing Bucky hears before blackness overtakes him is his handler’s voice. “Completely unstable. Wipe him, put him back on ice.”

*

It is 1986, and Howard barely makes it to his son’s graduation.

“Congratulations,” he says to Tony awkwardly.

“Thanks, Pop,” Tony says, the sarcasm thinly veiled. “Is Aunt Peggy here?”

Peggy had been standing back, giving them a moment, and she’s sorry for Howard for a moment, but he’s reaping what he sowed, so she steps forward and says warmly, “Of course I am.”

Tony brightens when he sees her, and Peggy smiles, remembering that same grin on a four year old showing her a circuit board.

She hugs him, whispers her congratulations, and then lets him go greet his mother and Howard’s business partner, Stane.

She sees that frantic kinetic energy that Howard often has brimming in Tony, and she sees how people are drawn to Tony, even as he keeps them at arm’s length, even if they _hate_ him, and she sees that they do.

He’s too young and too bright and he’s got that Stark arrogance on _top_ of a defensiveness in the form of vitriolic sarcasm that’s all his own.

He could have done with a father, Peggy thinks.

*

It is 1991, and the Winter Soldier walks again.

Howard and Maria Stark die in a flaming car.

*

It is 1991, and Peggy hears rumors that the Winter Soldier is back, and she stands at Howard’s grave and allows herself to cry.

She and Howard were _complicated_ , but they were allies even when they weren’t friends, and they depended on each other after the war in a way that few people could understand.

She leaves a bouquet of yellow flowers—bearded crepis—before she goes.

*

It is 1995 and the Winter Soldier is ordered to train a new generation of assassins.

None in the group are particularly memorable, except one woman with red hair and a deadly smile.

There are whispers about her; that her body and looks bely her age, that she’s already an accomplished assassin, that she’s supernaturally fast and strong.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t think much of it, although he knows she’s far and away the best in her class.

Then they spar, and this woman almost has him flat on his back in two seconds; if he didn’t have his arm and the pure muscle memory driven in by hours (and hours, and hours) of nonstop training, he might have lost to her. He doesn’t lose, but it is a close thing. (They would have thrown him back into the training sims, would have re-attached the corrective wristlets that shock him when he makes a wrong move, a superfluous motion, _anything_ that isn’t what they want.)

“What is your name?” he asks later, when they are sitting against the wall watching the others fight.

“Natalia,” she says, and her perfect lips curve into a smile.

*

It is 1997, and in a rare moment when both of them are between missions, they stop for a talk.

“Why are we doing this? Why are we doing their dirty work?” She looks into his eyes. She always does; never shies away.

“We certainly make a pair,” he tells her, and it’s true. The Widow and the Soldier, the most effective assassins the world has ever seen. Or not seen, as it were.

Natalia doesn’t repeat herself, but lets him draw her into a languid kiss.

(It is not permitted, what they are doing. Neither of them much care.)

(The question she had asked echoes in his mind for hours. The seed has been planted.)

*

It is 1998, and with every kill he completes, he wonders why he is doing this.

After one mission, he is questioned by his handlers on why he did not follow orders precisely. He cannot, _does not_ answer; he just stares at them silently (as Natalia would have done) and they leave him in a pitch black room for seven days with no human contact and they keep him awake the entire time with stimulants and it is the worst thing he can remember them doing to him, which is saying something. He thinks he is going to go mad.

The next time he is sent out, he follows his orders.

*

It is 1998, and Peggy cannot decide if she trusts Director Nicholas J. Fury.

Peggy doesn’t really trust very many people, though, not anymore. She hadn’t wholly trusted Pierce when he was director, but the world hadn’t ended and he had run a tight ship. Fury runs an even tighter one, and if anything, is even more careful than she herself is.

She doesn’t know if she trusts him, but she definitely respects him.

She wants to believe that SHIELD is in (relatively) good hands, but maybe that is the wishful thinking of an old woman.

*

It is 1999, and in another stolen moment (after a _disciplinary_ session; he had gone off grid for a week and paid dearly for it), he embraces her, sighs into her red, red hair. Says, “You need to leave.”

She, who weaves lies with every breath, has never been anything but honest with him. “I know.”

“Go well,” he says.

The kiss that follows is urgent; this may be (probably will be) the last time they will have each other, at least like this.

*

It is 1999, and Natalia Romanova holds a gun with steady hands to a man using a _bow,_ of all things. But his arrow is set to the string and pointed at her right eye, and when he says, “I never miss,” she believes him.

“I don’t either,” she says in clipped English.

“Well,” drawls the man. For all his relaxed tone, the arrow to her eye never wavers. “What a pair we are.”

(Natalia thinks of another man saying nearly the same thing, and for a fleeting moment considers returning. In the end, she is too selfish, if that is the right word. Her sense of self-preservation has always been strong, and in the end, Natalia Alianovna Romanova will always save herself.)

“I can kill you,” Natalia says slowly. This man doesn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

“You can,” he agrees. “And it looks like I can kill you. Again, what a pair.”

“Who are you?” She thinks she knows; a man who uses a bow and arrow to kill is not exactly inconspicuous, and if it is who she thinks he is, he works for an organization that wants her dead. That she might want to work for.

“You can call me Hawkeye,” the man says, still far too cheerful for the situation. “And I’ve been sent to kill you, but I don’t think I will.”

“Why not?” Natalia demands, and her finger is still on the trigger.

“Because you had the chance to kill me at least four times today. Maybe five. You made me last night.”

“Seven times,” Natalia says.

The man… Hawkeye. He whistles admiringly. “You _are_ the best,” he says. “Any chance you’d consider defecting? Great benefits over here. Top-notch health insurance. Dental’s mediocre, but all things considered, pretty good. Come to the dark side, or whatever?”

Natalia cocks her head. “At arrowpoint?”

Hawkeye seems to have an internal battle with himself, although it’s possible that he’s listening to whoever’s talking into his earpiece. And then he appears to make a decision and lowers his bow. “Not at arrowpoint,” he says. “No promises about my handler, although, come to think about it, he definitely uses guns, but he’ll back me on this. On you.”

(Unbeknownst to Natalia, Phillip J. Coulson is tearing a new one into Clint Barton’s ear.)

Natalia slowly lowers her gun.

Hawkeye smiles, a shit-eating grin if she’s ever seen one.

*

It is 1999, and he is strapped to a chair. He braces himself.

“Where is the Black Widow?”

The Winter Soldier does not respond, and an electrical shock pulses through him. (He’s had worse. He’s almost disappointed; they don’t seem to be trying at all.)

“Where is she?”

He gazes at them steadily, doesn’t speak. He hopes Natalia got away. The electricity is stronger this time, and lasts long enough that he is panting afterwards. “I don’t know where she is,” he tells them, partly truthfully.

“He’s protecting the bitch,” a man in a suit jacket says. “Put him back in the tank.”

The Winter Soldier strains against his cuffs, manages to pull free with his left arm, gets in a few good blows before someone jabs a syringe into his thigh. It’s a paralytic, and that’s just cruel, he thinks, that they’d keep him conscious and fully aware as they prep him to go back into cryo.

He’s trying to fight the paralytic; drugs move through his system quickly. But just as he begins to regain control, they lock him into place in the tank, and he wants to scream, but then again, he learned long ago that it doesn’t do any good, and then everything is cold and black and empty.

*

It is 2002, and Peggy is getting on in years but her mind is as sharp as it ever was, and as it turns out, she can still hold her own in a shouting match against a United States Army General. Good to know, she thinks, as she coldly regards a fuming Thaddeus Ross.

“We were _at war_ , General,” Peggy says, “And might I remind you that all participants in Project Rebirth were _fully aware_ of the implications of their actions, including all scientists and researchers. Your disinclination to grant full disclosure to the men and women working on the Bio Force Enhancement Project is irresponsible and immoral, and frankly unbecoming an officer of your rank.”

“Ma’am,” Ross says, and oh, this man is _trouble_ , arrogant and self-assured and foolish. “With all due respect, this country is at war, and I intend to defend it to the best of my ability.”

“Your men and women deserve to know why exactly they are conducting this research,” Peggy snaps.

“Agent Carter,” Ross says. “Are you entirely certain that your personal history isn’t what is holding you back from fully endorsing this project?”

And God, Peggy is sick and _tired_ of having her near-romantic involvement with Steve thrown into her face at every turn for over fifty years. “My history with Captain Rogers,” she says evenly, “Has absolutely nothing with my desire for you to be transparent about your goals for this project.”

(It would be a lie to say that, four years later, Peggy doesn’t experience a certain amount of smugness after reading reports of the Hulk incident. A good person would never be smug when so much has been destroyed, but then again, she never claimed she was a good person.)

*

It is 2010, and Peggy is _trying_ to stay away from SHIELD business, she really is. She’s done her work, and she’s done it well, and she deserves to rest. (That’s what her niece keeps telling her, anyway.)

But Tony has gone missing, and Peggy _knows_ he’s a grown man and she knows it’s been years since he’s let her protect him, but when she closes her eyes she sees the four year old proudly showing her the circuit board he built, the six year old who built an engine from spare parts in the workshop, the fifteen year old on the phone with her, telling her how _shitty_ everyone at MIT is.

She picks up her phone and calls Fury. “Director,” she says.

“Agent Carter,” Fury says. “What can I do for you?”

“Stark,” she says. “Look for him. Call it a personal favor.”

Fury agrees.

(Three months later, when Tony emerges from the desert with a magnet in his chest and a haunted look in the eyes, Peggy sits at Howard’s grave. She doesn’t visit terribly often, but it seems right. “He’s going to make it,” she says surely.

When a vigilante in a metal suit appears in Afghanistan, Peggy knows with a certainty that it is Tony, and she knows that his will be a long and hard road. But it will be a road, and that is more than she could have said before.)

*

It is 2011 and the Winter Soldier’s eyes are blank when he takes his orders.

They’re blank as he reports to his handlers, and they’re blank as he receives his next mission.

“We’ve stabilized the asset,” a man in a white coat says triumphantly one day as the Winter Soldier is sitting in a chair getting his arm worked on.

He wonders if he should be upset, but he can’t work up the energy.

*

It is 2012, and a Russian oil team discovers the _Valkyrie_.

The SHIELD team that shortly follows discovers a shield, and a man with it.

Frozen.

Cryogenically preserved.

In another country entirely, the Winter Soldier is being prepped to go back into the tank.

Fate has a sense of humor, and sometimes it’s a little twisted.

As warmth creeps back into Steven Rogers, James Buchanan Barnes slips into an ever deeper winter.

**Author's Note:**

> this... rapidly got away from me. i was shooting for around 2000 words, when suddenly it became a two-parter. a MASSIVE thanks to hayley, who did some recon for me when she saw the winter soldier again (because honestly, three times in four days would have been embarrassing).
> 
> hope you enjoyed this first part, and thank you for reading.
> 
> (stick around for a happy resolution... i think. haven't quite decided yet.)


End file.
